


twenty one years

by silklace



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:23:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21923443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silklace/pseuds/silklace
Summary: Teenage love and an interlude.
Relationships: Jon Favreau/Tommy Vietor
Comments: 28
Kudos: 41





	twenty one years

**Author's Note:**

> this was intended to be a quick & dirty response to a tumblr prompt but it go too long. the prompt was: podsa + Till then my windows ache. + vietreau .

They’re 17 and made of soup. Jon passes the blunt to him. “Just like - all soup inside, y’know? Jus’ like a skin bag of soup.”

“That’s disgusting,” Tommy tells him, because it is. He’s looking at the burned out streetlamp in the corner of the playground and Jon’s got one hand on his knee and his breath smells like smoke and Natty Ice and Tommy wants to lick inside of it. Later, in his parent’s basement on the pull-out couch he gets one knee between Jon’s legs, precarious and tipping, and says, “You want this bag o’ soup? Is that what you’re saying?” and Jon, laughing, a little breathless, nods and arches up to kiss him.

They’re 21 and Worcester and Gambier might as well be opposite ends of the earth. Different fucking astral planes. He takes a poetry class and Jon gets a girlfriend and his professor looks at him like he’s tired of this story, the one with the jock and the complex about his sexuality. His hands feel huge. He buys a second-hand copy of Neruda and doesn’t understand a word of it. Not really, not even when he pulls it out, sometimes, in the middle of the night when he can’t sleep and his roommate is snoring and he puzzles over the lines. Matilde was probably a bitch, anyways, and isn’t life as a house a stupid metaphor? _Trite_, his professor would say. He knows what a metaphor is, though, even if his professor doesn’t think he knows much else. It’s when you want something bad enough you call it something else, so the wanting doesn’t hurt so bad.

They’re 25 and live in the same house and it would be funny if it weren’t so funny. Jon buzzes his hair off one day and Tommy can’t stop laughing because if he stopped laughing he’d want to touch, see for himself how soft skin and scalp can be under his fingers, and if he did that he’d have to just launch himself from the van right fucking now and take up life in a highway ditch as a highway ditch man. He’d probably have to grow a beard and start wearing cargo pants, which would never work, as Jon makes fun of him at least three times a week for his inability to do the former and his sister threw out all of his cargo pants years ago anyways. They go to parties and work events and Jon introduces him as his good friend and Tommy introduces him as his childhood friend slash colleague and neither of them mention that when they were 17 they were going to run away together and open a video game bar and kiss each other for the rest of their lives.

They’re 28 and they’re going to work in the White House and one day these are going to be the best days of their lives and the running joke of course is that that's when they'll sleep. Or when they’re dead. Doesn’t matter. Six months pass in something of a haze of caffeine and then one day he comes home, bleary-eyed and with his tie loosened around his throat, and finds Jon sitting outside his apartment with a greasy bag of take out next to him. He scrambles to his feet when he sees Tommy. “I was hungry,” he says, shrugging, and then, “And I missed you. Like seeing you. Not at work.”

Tommy says, “We’re always at work,” which is mostly true, except for when they’re out in the city, vodka sweat on their fingertips and surrounded by people who work for the actual fucking government. Like they do. The way they do.

He finds a couple of bottles of cheap beer in the back of his fridge and they eat standing up in the kitchen. Jon took his tie and shoes off and every so often he flexes his socked feet like they ache. Tommy looks away and takes a sip of his beer. Jon got back from Japan like two days ago or something and there are purple smudges under his eyes.

They fight halfheartedly about who’s going to sleep on the couch and when they’re both in Tommy’s bed, eyes on the ceiling, Jon says, “Remember?” and Tommy pinches the inside of his bicep, hard. Jon could say anything next. _Remember that time we belted pillows to our bellies and backs and sumo wrestled in the front yard? Remember that time you chased vodka with red bull all night and threw up for seven hours and wouldn’t let anyone but me rub your back? Remember that time we did donuts in the church parking lot that Christmas and it was snowing and you said you were pretty sure there wasn’t anything wrong with us like spiritually or whatever? Remember the first time I sucked you off, at the lake house, and afterwards you fell asleep on the sand and got sunburned so badly you couldn’t sleep on your belly for like a week?_

But all Jon says is, “Remember we gotta set up that interview with WaPo tomorrow,” and Tommy breathes out through his nose until he can say, “Yeah,” but by that point Jon’s already asleep.

They’re 31 and Jon says, _I don’t want to do this forever,_ and what he means is, _I don’t want to do this anymore._ “Me fucking neither,” he says, after a beat, and of course what he means is that he thought they would. Thought they were. Gonna do it forever. “What else would we do though?” he says instead, laughing like it’s a joke, only Jon looks over at him speculatively from behind his beer bottle. Rubs his fingers on the sticky bar table. “We wouldn’t have to - do the same thing,” Jon says, slowly and carefully.

“Well, obviously,” Tommy says. “We’re not like. Attached at the hip. Or married, or whatever.”

“Right,” Jon says, and Tommy excuses himself to the bathroom, slapping Jon once on the back on his way by. He throws up in the toilet, and orders a vodka tonic on his way back from the bar, and doesn’t think about Neruda and how sometimes it’s like that - like waiting in an empty house and looking out of the windows all the time.

They’re 33 and Jon’s mouth is the shape of something sweet and good. He can’t stop thinking about that and and also about how Jon’s girlfriend probably also thinks it. When they’re fucking, when Jon’s above her or maybe underneath her, mouth a little open like he does when he’s concentrating or when he feels really, really good. Eyes soft and big. Lips half-parted, like he’s saying, “Oh, you, yes, that’s exactly who I’ve been wanting.”

He slaps a hand down on his desk chair. Jon looks up. “Maybe Lovett’s right. About the whole California thing.”

Jon laughs, the kind of laugh that means he’s listening but also he’s still got half or three quarters of his attention on something else. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “I’m sick of winter.”

Jon laughs again. “Maybe.”

Three weeks later Tommy flies out to look at apartments in San Francisco and when he comes back with a signed lease, Jon says, “You were fucking serious, I guess,” and he says it like a joke and he says it like it’s not a joke and Tommy thinks, _I don’t want to do this forever._

They’re 34 and Tommy has a boyfriend and Jon lives in LA and posts pictures of him and Lovett under palm trees and wearing t-shirts and sunglasses. Tommy’s boyfriend is nice - dimples, a little gap between his teeth, sucks cock like he knows what he’s doing. Tommy comes so hard when he’s with him he thinks, maybe, he should’ve been a little more honest with himself a little bit sooner.

The thing is, San Francisco still gets really cold in the winter.

So he visits Jon for a weekend, which turns into a week because he can work remotely, which turns into two weeks because it’s his company, which turns into three because sometimes in the evenings when it’s warm enough Jon turns the heater on in his pool and says, “C’mon, it’s practically like a hot tub,” and little droplets of water cling to him, all over, like they can’t let go of something as sweet and good as the touch of Jon’s skin.

Tommy’s boyfriend calls him once when they’re working from Jon’s sunlit dining room. Lovett’s ordering them food for lunch so he stands up, phone next to his ear, and says, “Hey,” in this hushed voice. He doesn’t realize he’s hunching his shoulders until Jon gives him a questioning look. He turns away, looks out the window, wanders into the living room.

“I think you’ve got like - some stuff to figure out,” his boyfriend says, and Tommy says, “Uh, yeah. I - yeah,” and his boyfriend says, “Jesus,” like he hadn’t expected it to be that easy, and Tommy can hear Jon and Lovett, bickering in the kitchen, and then suddenly Jon’s laughter, bright and ringing. It is though - it is that easy.

They’re 37 and they’re about to do a live show when they get a call that their studio flooded back in LA from the second floor toilet and Tommy, with fifteen minutes to spare, comes back into their dressing room with his hands raised and says, “It’s cool, it’s fine, it’s all taken care of,” in this voice like they should immediately start praising him, which mostly he learned from Lovett, and he’s in a good fucking mood and a little water damage isn’t going to change that, and Jon shuts his mouth with an audible click and says, “Tommy, I gotta talk to you.”

“Okay,” he says, and lets Jon push him into the antechamber attached to their dressing room, telling him, “Any problem you got? Throw it at me. I’m getting shit done, I don’t know if you noticed.”

Jon says, “Yeah, I fucking noticed,” and Tommy laughs, a little, and then Jon says, “I’m going to - I want to kiss you,” and Tommy stops laughing.

“Here?” he says, which isn’t what he meant.

Jon’s eyes are half-lidded. “You’re so fucking hot,” he says, and then, “I mean. Well, you are. I’m such an idiot. I’m sorry I’m such an idiot.”

“I think maybe you’re going to need to catch me up here,” Tommy tells him. Jon’s wearing this fucking taupe Henley that unbuttons practically to his navel.

“Right. Well. No. That’ll take too long, and we have to go do a fucking show, Tommy, but what I mean is - I don’t want to deal with flooded studios and overflowing toilets with anyone - _anyone_,” he says fiercely, “but you.”

“Oh,” Tommy says.

“You’re it for me,” Jon says, eyes so wide they look like windows, and Tommy’s not sure - who’s been watching for who, after all this time. “I’m sorry, I’m an asshole, springing this on you, I just. Shit.” He gives a little smile. “You don’t have to answer right now, I mean, you don’t have to say anything now - or, god, ever, obviously. But. I’m glad I told you.” He smiles again, though this time it’s a little shakier and when he turns he takes a big, deep breath like he’s fortifying himself to walk out of there without Tommy next to him, and Tommy reaches for him and he is so very done with words, now, and instead presses him against the wall and kisses him and kisses him and kisses him and kisses him.

They’re 38 and they’re looking at houses and Tommy says, “Let’s get a place with big windows, lots of sunlight, you know?” He looks at Jon’s face. “What?”

“Nothing,” Jon says, smiling, looking down at his coffee cup. He’s wearing boxers. He’s got a mouth shaped mark on the side of his throat and every once in a while he reaches up to touch it. “That’s just - you used to say that about the stupid video game bar we were gonna open. When we were kids.”

Tommy feels that hit - someplace between his sternum and his belly. Sometimes he thinks to himself, _I got to have you when we were kids and I get to have you now and asking for more would be greedy,_ but sometimes he thinks maybe he is - greedy. Maybe that’s the worst thing about him, that he goes on wanting and wanting and wanting even when he should’ve learned how to stop along the way.

Instead, he says, lightly, “That’s because I have an eye for aesthetics, always have,” and Jon says, “Yes, classy. That is exactly how I would describe you as a teenager.”

Later, in their bedroom, against the window that faces the crowd of hydrangea bushes, Tommy puts his hand on Jon’s back and says, “Windows are good for this, too,” and Jon goes easily, bending at the waist, rubbing his ass against Tommy’s cock and making a sweet noise when Tommy’s hands find his hips. Tommy waits until he’s inside of him, making him pant with it, his hand reaching back to cradle Tommy’s head like he's holding something tender and precious, and then he tells him, “Look at us,” and Jon lifts his head, finding the reflection of Tommy in the window, mouth soft and open, and he says, “Oh, god, I love you,” and Tommy says it back to him, like he's been saying it for twenty-one years, like it’s easy, and natural, and familiar - and it is, after all, isn't it?

+++

_Matilde, where are you? Down there I noticed,  
under my necktie and just above the heart,  
a certain pang of grief between the ribs,  
you were gone that quickly._

_I needed the light of your energy,  
I looked around, devouring hope.  
I watched the void without you that is like a house,  
nothing left but tragic windows._

_Out of sheer taciturnity the ceiling listens  
to the fall of the ancient leafless rain,  
to feathers, to whatever the night imprisoned:_

_so I wait for you like a lonely house_  
_till you will see me again and live in me.  
_ _Till then my windows ache._

\- Pablo Neruda

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments and feedback always treasured!


End file.
